A school district in western Arkansas will remain closed for the week after more than 300 students reported being sick with the flu, school officials said Tuesday.
Horatio Public Schools said in a notice to parents that the district has canceled classes until Monday "to prevent further illness and loss of instructional time." Students in the Sevier County district were let out of class around noon Tuesday.
Superintendent Lee Smith said it's the first time he has had to cancel school because of an illness outbreak, which he said saw more than 20 percent of students and several teachers absent from class Monday.
"Today it was worse," he said.
Roughly a third of the 950 students in the district missed school Tuesday and either had confirmed cases of the flu or had flu-like symptoms, Smith said.
Smith attributed the district's high flu numbers to the low number of students who had gotten flu shots, saying nearly all of the 170 or so students who had gotten shots didn't report getting sick or had only mild flu symptoms.
"This year it just didn't seem to be a priority, and now we're paying the consequences," he said.
Increasing the number of students who participate in the school's flu shot program will be a priority next year, the superintendent said.
The flu can be deadly in younger children who aren't vaccinated, said Jennifer Dillaha, the medical director for immunization at the Arkansas Department of Health. That's because they likely haven't had the flu, so their immune systems aren't as strong at fending off the virus, she said.
The state Department of Health on Tuesday raised the spread of this year's influenza outbreak across the state, denoting it as "widespread," or when the flu is prevalent in a majority of the state.
The weekly report said this year's dominant strain, H1N1, was confirmed at far higher rates in children and teenagers younger than 18 than other ages.
Twenty children and teens have been admitted to Arkansas hospitals because of the flu since Sept. 30. The agency reported 17 deaths across all ages, including one pediatric death.
Though this year's rates appear lower than last year's flu season, Dillaha said the worst of this year's season has yet to come.
"The flu season has not peaked yet," she said. "We want people to go ahead and get the vaccine so they have time to develop an immunity."
Officials at Horatio plan to disinfect the school and allow the flu virus -- which has a four- to five-day incubation period -- to run its course.
"It will hopefully give it a chance to die out," Smith said.
State Desk on 01/30/2019